To date, air-conditioning apparatuses have been proposed that include a plurality of indoor units that are disposed in an air conditioned region and that are grouped into a plurality of systems; a plurality of outdoor units each of which is provided in a corresponding one of the systems and that operate in accordance with requests from the indoor units of the system; system control means that controls corresponding outdoor units in accordance with requests from the indoor units of the systems; and integrated control means that stops some of the systems in accordance with operating loads on the systems (see, for example, Patent Literature 1).
The air-conditioning apparatus can improve air-conditioning efficiency because the air-conditioning load per system can be increased by stopping systems that are operating under a low load. Accordingly, the efficiency of a cooling operation or a heating operation in an intermediate period, which is performed under a low air conditioning load, can also be improved.
In the air-conditioning apparatus, in order to reduce nonuniformity in an air-conditioning effect (temperature distribution in a room), each of the indoor units of one system is disposed so as to be adjacent to a corresponding one of the indoor units of another system (the same applies to Patent Literature 2).
In order to improve comfort in a room, air-conditioning systems have been proposed that control air conditioning by dividing the room into zones by estimating the temperature distribution in the room and controlling a stationary air conditioner and a circulator on the basis of the estimated temperature distribution (see, for example, Patent Literature 3).